Richard Joseph Martin, PhD

Preceptor in Expository Writing, Harvard University

Richard Joseph Martin received a PhD in anthropology from Princeton University and a BA in comparative literature and society and sociocultural anthropology from Columbia University. He is co-editor of Sex: Ethnographic Encounters (Bloomsbury 2018), and is currently completing a book manuscript based on ethnographic fieldwork he conducted on the BDSM scene in Berlin, Germany. His article "Toward an Affective Phenomenology of Discourse: BDSM and the Fifty Shades Phenomenon" can be found in The Journal of Language and Sexuality (2018). His current research interests include constructions of gender, sex, and identity in social media spaces, theories of play, and educational reform movements. At the Harvard Extension School, he has taught courses in behavioral science research methodology, social science writing, the anthropology of sex and gender, and the anthropology of media. At Harvard College, he regularly teaches Expos 20: Society and the Witch, a course that introduces first-year students to academic writing in the disciplines of anthropology, literature, film studies, folklore, and mythology. Before coming to Harvard, he taught in the writing program and anthropology department at Princeton University.